Elements of Military Art and Science eBook

EXPLANATION OF PLATES 409

PREFACE

The following pages were hastily thrown together in
the form of lectures, and delivered, during, the past
winter, before the Lowell Institute of Boston.
They were written without the slightest intention
of ever publishing them; but several officers of militia,
who heard them delivered, or afterwards read them
in manuscript, desire their publication, on the ground
of their being useful to a class of officers now likely
to be called into military service. It is with
this view alone that they are placed in the hands
of the printer. No pretension is made to originality
in any part of the work; the sole object having been
to embody, in a small compass, well established military
principles, and to illustrate these by reference to
the events of past history, and the opinions and practice
of the best generals.

Small portions of two or three of the following chapters
have already appeared, in articles furnished by the
author to the New York and Democratic Reviews, and
in a “Report on the Means of National Defence,”
published by order of Congress.

H.W.H.

May, 1846.

ELEMENTS OF MILITARY ART AND SCIENCE.

CHAPTER I.

Introduction.

Our distance from the old world, and the favorable
circumstances in which we have been placed with respect
to the other nations of the new world, have made it
so easy for our government to adhere to a pacific
policy, that, in the sixty-two years that have elapsed
since the acknowledgment of our national independence,
we have enjoyed more than fifty-eight of general peace;
our Indian border wars have been too limited and local
in their character to seriously affect the other parts
of the country, or to disturb the general conditions
of peace. This fortunate state of things has
done much to diffuse knowledge, promote commerce,
agriculture, and manufactures; in fine, to increase
the greatness of the nation and the happiness of the
individual. Under these circumstances our people
have grown up with habits and dispositions essentially
pacific, and it is to be hoped that these feelings
may not soon be changed. But in all communities
opinions sometimes run into extremes; and there are
not a few among us who, dazzled by the beneficial
results of a long peace, have adopted the opinion that
war in any case is not only useless, but actually
immoral; nay, more, that to engage in war is wicked
in the highest degree, and even brutish.